Educators: The Most Important Leadership Trait You Can Teach This Year
A young couple recently moved into a new house. While eating breakfast their first morning, the young woman saw her neighbor hanging her wash on the clothesline in her backyard. “That laundry looks dirty. She doesn’t know how to wash correctly. Maybe she needs better detergent,” remarked the wife. Her husband looked on, but remained…
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How to Help Generation Z Redefine Resilience and Overcome Life’s Challenges
I’ve been white water rafting twice in my life, once in California and once in Colorado. It’s completely different from the lazy river rafting I’ve enjoyed on the Chattahoochee River near Atlanta. When rafting on the rapids, I don’t go out without an experienced guide who knows how to handle the rushing waters, rocks and…
Continue ReadingTwo Ideas to Enable Students to Engage and Retain a Virtual Lesson
Public education has been founded upon memorization and testing for over a century. While we all agree we must do more than drill our students to memorize curriculum, remembering information will always play a role in learning. Today, millions of teachers face an even more arduous task of doing all of this remotely. So, what…
Continue ReadingFour Huge Mistakes Schools Have Made Over the Years
I sat in a well-lit room, full of colorful posters on the walls. Twelve people from four generations sat in a circle. Our goal was to discuss how our world had changed over the decades and if we felt those changes made us better or worse. You can imagine our discussion was as colorful as…
Continue ReadingHow to Prepare Gen Z for the ‘New Normal’ After the Pandemic
When I was a young kid, seat belts were introduced to automobiles. I remember in 1968 when the federal government made them mandatory. At first, they were only lap belts with no strap across the chest. People claimed they hindered movement and wrinkled their clothes. It was a strange time as I watched several adults…
Continue ReadingFive Ingredients to Help Students Recover Following a Pandemic
The population of young people, ages 16 to 24, were already facing mental health problems. Now they feel delayed by COVID-19, and it has added to their anxiety levels. This portion of Generation Z and Millennials are disadvantaged. While it sounds strong, many of them feel: Postponed Pushed aside Penalized The teens in this group…
Continue ReadingThree Questions That Challenge Students to Lead
A few weeks ago, seven high school and college students organized an effort to get a petition signed that would create a mask-wearing policy in their city of Savannah, GA. I spoke to them about their strategy to reach their goal and why it felt so important. Each student found his or her own way…
Continue ReadingWhat Parents and Teachers Can Do That Google Cannot Do
Many parents fret that they’re not having the same conversations with their children that they did with their parents when they were kids. Teachers fret that engaging students in the classroom is tougher today because they compete against YouTube, Netflix, and Tik Tok. Coaches and youth workers fret that keeping a student athlete’s attention is…
Continue ReadingFive Ideas to Keep Negativity from Becoming Normal During Quarantine
Do you identify with the scenario below? The first few weeks of quarantine, your family was energized. The whole idea was novel; not having to go to work or school was intriguing. You could do your daily routines in your sweats or pajamas. How cool was that? The next few weeks became monotonous. The novelty…
Continue ReadingThree Myths About Leadership We Must Help Students Discard
For decades now, leadership professors and leader development specialists have categorized leadership using an uppercase letter: Leader, verses a lowercase letter: leader. This is helpful in determining how different people influence a team. First, those who appear to be natural leaders, often in positions of authority, are Leaders. The uppercase L is often a person…
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